The Fight Against Forgetting 9/11

Pleasant Valley Fire Department Chief Robert Stinson pulled his flatbed pickup up to a largely empty airport hangar in New York a decade ago.

Since 2002, it had been the grim reliquary of curated pieces of the World Trade Center, leveled during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In 2010, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey began distributing the relics to fire departments, municipalities, and schools.

But by 2016, some 2,600 parts and portions had been distributed to organizations and, once inside the hangar, Stinson saw there was little left.

A crushed New York Police Department cruiser stood intact, mottled with rust from its years in storage. The hangar also had a sign bearing the numeral 5; before the attacks, it had alerted pedestrians to an entrance on the center’s northeast side.

Then a port authority staffer led him to a pallet heavy with twisted structural steel.

That, she said, was what had been set aside for Pleasant Valley, a community of nearly 3,000 residents located about 10 miles northeast of Downtown Kansas City.

“I was amazed,” Stinson said recently, “we got anything at all.”

Volunteers later incorporated the remnants into the community’s Sept. 11 memorial. Dedicated in 2021, it may be the most recent of the numerous memorials across the Kansas City area, many built by municipalities and their respective fire departments. 

“As soon as I had heard that one of the towers had collapsed, I knew that a lot of firefighters had just died,” said Stinson, then a firefighter EMT with the North Kansas City Fire Department.

“Because whenever everybody is running out of a building, we’re running in,” he added. “From that point forward, the attacks have continued to have a profound effect on me. I can’t remember a time when I’ve ever stopped thinking about it.”

A significant number

Other Kansas City area residents, meanwhile, fear their neighbors no longer remember much about the attacks that took place a quarter century ago. 

“People are starting to forget,” said Connie Guerrero of Lee’s Summit.

She stood in line on Aug. 5 on the National WWI Museum and Memorial’s south plaza to examine a 16,900-pound steel beam from the World Trade Center. The Tunnel to Towers Foundation, based in Staten Island, New York, toured the country with the beam this summer.

“People are beginning to think, ‘Well, that was a long time ago,’” added Guerrero, whose daughter is a Kansas City Fire Department battalion chief. “It breaks my heart.”

It is difficult to imagine forgetting that day, when hijackers flew airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C.

Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks. The dead included the people on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field when passengers fought back against the hijackers.

The 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City has a section on its website marking the 25th anniversary of the attacks. The site notes that 100 million Americans are too young to remember “the day that changed our city and nation forever.”

Six people with ties to the Kansas City area died that day.

Accordingly, many Kansas City area organizations are planning remembrance ceremonies and events.

They include:

• The 343 firefighters who on Sunday honored their 343 brethren killed that day in New York by climbing the equivalent of 110 stories at the 1111 Main skyscraper in Downtown Kansas City, formerly known as Town Pavilion.
• Students in Olathe West High School’s Public Safety Academy, who will also climb staircases and complete other tasks to salute firefighters and first responders killed.
• Cast members of “Come From Away,” a musical presented by the Kansas City Repertory Theatre. During 11 September performances,  they will celebrate the residents of Gander, Newfoundland, who housed and fed the approximately 7,000 passengers whose airliners were routed there after United States airspace closed on Sept. 11.

Pleasant Valley is scheduled to hold its 9/11 ceremony at 9:30 a.m. Friday at 8108 Pleasant Valley Road.

Among the participants will be the volunteers who — after receiving the steel Stinson and his son, Brendon, brought back from New York — designed and fabricated the Pleasant Valley memorial consisting of two approximately 6-foot facsimile towers.

Constructed of perforated corrugated steel, they showcase the World Trade Center remnants.

The facsimile twin towers stand in the center of a pentagon-shaped concrete slab. The memorial is positioned so the towers’ shadows lengthen as daylight turns to twilight.

It’s possible, said Pete Knudsen, current Pleasant Valley fire chief, that some area residents have compartmentalized the attacks over time.

“That’s just the nature of life,” Knudsen said. “But the 25th anniversary — that’s a pretty significant number, and so it comes to the surface a little more.”

Visible from the street, the Pleasant Valley memorial reminds passersby of the tragedy.

But given the monument’s placement just outside the station’s doors, Knudsen added, “We are reminded every day we come here.”

Educators are partly to blame for an increasing lack of knowledge about the 9/11 attacks, said John Carroll, a former New York Fire Department battalion chief and Tunnel to Towers board member. He was in Kansas City for the Aug. 5 event.

Though local examples suggest otherwise, Carroll argued that schools have all but abandoned discussions about the attacks. 

That’s why the exhibit is important, he said, “because a lot of people have forgotten what really happened, and people who were not even born when it happened are not being taught about it.”

Attendees at the Tunnel to Towers event offered differing perspectives on 9/11.

Retired U.S. Army Sgt. Anthony Vick of Warrensburg first learned of the attacks when teachers pulled a TV into his classroom. He was a high school sophomore.

“It was the most memorable and influential thing that happened to this country in my lifetime,” he said. “But you now have a whole generation coming up, whether they were alive on Sept. 11 or not, who are not well informed about what happened.”

Yet Blake Stewart of Olathe, who attended the World War I memorial event with Lenny Barrera of Orlando, Florida, said the attacks still feel like they happened yesterday. “Nothing else that has happened over the past 25 years is that vivid in my mind,” he said.

But if Americans can’t remember everything about Sept. 11, security protocols are reminders every time they fly, Barrera added.

Still others remembered the solidarity they believed the attacks prompted.

“It was a shocking event, something that came out of the blue,” said Brad Evans of Kansas City, North, who brought his wife, daughter and two grandchildren to the Aug. 5 ceremony. “It galvanized Americans. It brought the country together, like during World War II.”

Repertory Theatre Artistic Director Stuart Carden also remembered the unity evident not only across the country but across North America.

He said staging “Come From Away” is “an act of practicing being a community together” during this period of political divisiveness.

Working with ‘Sacred’ Steel

A plaque posted near the steel beam displayed by the Tunnel to Towers Foundation described it as “sacred.”

If not quite holy relics, the salvaged metal remnants add a visceral quality to the several Kansas City-area memorials incorporating portions of the World Trade Center.

Members of the Kansas City-area first responder community dedicated memorials incorporating World Trade Center steel in Overland Park in 2012, North Kansas City in 2016, and Smithville in 2018.

The Pleasant Valley initiative gained momentum with the decision to build a new fire station. Previous efforts to work through the New York Fire Department failed.

But then Stinson read a notice in a fire service publication detailing how to contact the port authority.

On Sept. 24, 2015, Stinson wrote the authority, noting that a contractor had broken ground on the community’s fire station and that they had set aside a patio by the entrance for the memorial.

The new station opened in 2016. Stinson stored the twisted steel remnants from New York in the new station’s mezzanine.

A Trip to NYC

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But if the department had the will, it did not have the way.

The solution came in the form of women welders — some of whom travelled the country working on pipelines — who happened to be looking for a project. The connector was Jennifer Gallagher, a Pleasant Valley resident who had recently signed on as a department volunteer.

Gallagher called her welder friends. “All of them looked at the metal and said, ‘We’re doing this.’”

Just what “this” would be remained unclear until group member Deila Ray, during a Christmas Day online chat, displayed a rendering drawn by her husband, Jack.

“We all said, ‘This is it,’” Gallagher said.

The initiative relied on volunteer time, community contributions and in-kind donations from a variety of area businesses. Especially encouraging were the six young people who focused on the memorial for their Eagle Scout service projects, said Chris Grant, a Pleasant Valley EMT volunteer firefighter.

The memorial’s 2021 dedication drew about 300 people. “That’s about 10% of Pleasant Valley’s population,” he said.

The public safety pathways

This week at Olathe West, “investigators” will gather for a briefing and submit what they’ve learned about the four airliners involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Their reports will include:

• What weapons were used
• How the terrorists gained access to the planes
• What information was relayed from calls from the planes
• Who were the victims

Twenty-five years after the attacks, this information is widely available.

But much of it may be new to the “investigators,” who are freshmen enrolled in the school’s Public Safety Academy. The program prepares students for possible careers in law enforcement or fire service.

The “briefings” represent their first assignment.

“We take it to another level,” said academy instructor Jeff Van Dyke.

“We go into detail about Sept. 11. It’s important the students remember how the world has changed so greatly since then. You can’t just walk into an airport like you used to.”

Broad statements alleging neglect of the terrorist attacks in the nation’s schools do not stand up to scrutiny at Olathe West, where district officials dedicated a section of the World Trade Center steel when the building opened in 2017.

Students enrolled in the school’s fire services “pathway” are scheduled Friday to climb Olathe West staircases 36 times, equivalent to the 110 stories of the World Trade Center’s twin towers. 

Students will wear 30 to 45 pounds of gear while passing portraits of firefighters killed that day.

The law enforcement students, in turn, are scheduled to complete calisthenics that include 72 pushups and a 300-second “plank,” or core exercise hold.

The exercises reference the 72 first responders who died in the initial World Trade Center collapse as well as the 300 people who died from complications connected to their Sept. 11 response, according to school district spokesperson Erin Schulte.

All Olathe district schools will schedule an announcement, ceremony, or lesson on the anniversary day, Schulte said.

More detailed study of the 9/11 attacks comes later in students’ high school years as they progress through American history.

The district’s 9/11 recognition events coincide with “Freedom Week,” which includes the Sept. 17 commemoration of the signing of the United States Constitution in 1787.

On Friday, Olathe West law enforcement students will receive laminated cards detailing individual law enforcement officers who died Sept. 11. The cards will be tucked into their gear or their pockets.

 “It’s a way to honor them, but it’s also an inspiration when you’re out there, out of breath, sweating, and feeling like you just can’t do it,” said Ariel Cervantes-Hernandez, a senior in the academy’s law enforcement pathway.

The annual observances aren’t needed to remind the larger school’s approximately 1,600 students about the attacks, Cervantes-Hernandez added.

“Obviously, a lot of it is about respect,” he said. “There were a lot of innocent people who died that day.”

But the observances strengthen everyone’s resolve, he added, “just to make sure that we prevent this from happening again, especially with all of the improvements in technology since 2001.”

All accounted for

High school students are not the only ones working up a sweat in remembrance of first responders killed in the line of duty on 9/11. Working professionals like Lucas Pilgrim do it too.

He completed his 11th stair climb during the Stair Climb event in Downtown Kansas City on Sunday.

Like his 342 firefighting colleagues, Pilgrim knew the drill.

In the morning he’d received a lanyard bearing the name and photograph of a New York City firefighter killed in the attacks.

Upon finishing, he read his own name aloud, then his department—the Fort Osage Fire Protection District—and then the name of the New York City firefighter whose memory he honored.

He then affixed the small black badge with the firefighter’s name on it to a Velcro strip on the nearby “Accountability Board.”

The late New York City firefighter had officially been accounted for.

The last person anyone might expect to forget about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks would be a firefighter.

Yet the idea had crossed Pilgrim’s mind. 

Would there still be enough registrants to honor all 343 firefighters as the anniversary of the attacks grew ever more distant? Pilgrim wondered.

But two years ago, for the first time, he’d completed the climb with a firefighter who was born after the attacks.

“So ever since, I’ve understood the importance of being sure later generations will keep this going, and making sure we remember everything that was lost and learned on that day.”

Pilgrim need not have worried.

Registration for this year’s annual climb opened in June, and all available slots had been filled within 30 minutes, according to Stair Climb spokesperson Kevin Joles.

After his climb Sunday, Pilgrim seemed ever more assured.

“Today there were three firefighters in my team who are under 25 years old, meaning they weren’t alive at the time of the attacks,” Pilgrim said.

“It means when I’m dead and gone, those team members will still be making this climb.”

The climbing began at 8:45 a.m. — the approximate time the first emergency call was transmitted 25 years ago in New York.

It was clear early that this Sunday’s climb was arduous.

In the three cramped rest stations, firefighters stood gasping, sank into the occasional folding chair, or just lowered themselves onto the concrete floor. 

Volunteers handed out plastic bottles of water.

Soon the floors were slick with it, and that wasn’t all: several firefighters gratefully accepted the vomit bags that volunteer Tiffany Saturday began handing out shortly after the climb began. 

But soon their short breaks were over, and the firefighters stood again, exchanging silent fist bumps before heading up the next flight of stairs, where portraits of the slain New York City firefighters taped to the walls greeted them.

Every firefighter wore his or her “bunker gear” — coats, pants, helmets, boots — and routinely carried more weight represented by compressed air packs, hose packs, or long firefighter axes.

They climbed 34 floors, then rode down in elevators, and then climbed 34 stories a second time, and then did the same a third time — the equivalent of 102 stories.

Then they climbed eight stories more to match the 110 stories of the World Trade Center towers.

Down below, in the 1111 Main reception floor, family members watched live video feeds from the staircases on the 7th and 34th floors. 

Many firefighters were still spring-legged near the end of their climbs; others less so.

When they ultimately emerged, with matted helmet hair and sweaty faces, they greeted well-wishers.

Among them was the wife and three sons of Robert Ohlsen of the Seneca Fire Department of northeast Kansas.

Sunday’s climb was Ohlsen’s tenth.

“I want to show respect to the responders who died that day,” he said. “I feel it’s the least I can do.

“But the reason I keep climbing is my three boys,” Ohlsen added. “They have grown up watching me do this, and I believe, because of that, they will have reverence for the occasion.”